Community Catches A Glimpse Of Vietnam In ‘Honor In The Valley Of Tears’ Documentary

Members of the Owen Valley Honor Guard presented colors prior to the showing of the Vietnam War documentary film “Honor In The Valley Of Tears” on Sunday afternoon inside the auditorium of Owen Valley High School. Pictured above are, left to right: Mike Harvey, Joe Goldman, Ron Morley, Ted Mangin, Stanley Sims and Bill Wood. (Staff Photo) A sobering, first-person account of just a small portion of the Vietnam War is what the approximately 70 in attendance gasped, laughed and wiped away tears from Sunday afternoon seated inside the Owen Valley High School auditorium. But more importantly, the documentary film, “Honor In The Valley of Tears,” provided those who never actually laid their eyes on the jungle of Vietnam an awakening to an idea of what the young men of the ‘60s and ‘70s known as “grunts” went through halfway around the world.

The men of A Company, First Battalion, Eighth Infantry, Fourth Infantry Division of the United States Army, 90-percent of which were draftees, were led by a 34-year-old who had just completed his second tour in Vietnam.

Members of A Company of the 1/8th of the Fourth Division, Landis Bargatze of St. Louis and Sam Ponsoll of Danville, Kentucky were on hand Sunday for the film showing at Owen Valley High School. (Staff Photo) It was a story about a war-hardened leader who had been there before and simply wasn’t about to let his guys be another company overran by the North Vietnamese. The story depicted the man they refer to as ‘Top,” not just their commanding officer, but a hard-ass with no intent on hanging up his dog tags even after multiple deployments. Many of the men who served under First Sergeant David H. McNerney thought of the Congressional Medal of Honor recipient as a father figure.

Owen Valley High School senior Elizabeth Coffin sang the Star Spangled Banner prior to Sunday’s showing of “Honor In The Valley Of Tears” at OVHS. She is the daughter of Frank and Julie Coffin of Spencer. (Staff Photo) “He had such a look to him. He had his dress uniform on, all of his medals he had earned in Korea and Vietnam, he was just so different than anybody I’d ever met in my life,” one veteran of A-Company said.

“He had that look to him, because he had killed before, this guy was just a small guy, but you could tell, he was a feisty cuss,” another added.

The film told the story of the 1st Battalion, 8th Regiment, 4th Division of the U.S. Army, from basic training and advanced individual training at Fort Lewis, Washington. As the story goes on, it builds up to the point of March 22, 1967 when B Company attempted to come to the aid of A Company. According to his men, on that day, McNerney simply disappeared into the jungle with disregard for his own well-being.

“I’m going up to where the action is,” he was heard saying by one G.I.

Throughout the fire fight, the men of A Company formed a wall of fire around its wounded while fending off the enemy.

Ross “Pee Wee” Rembert recalled, “He says, Let me tell you how things are in this company, you do what I tell you to do and you do when I tell you to do it. And you do it to the best of your ability, because you will die in Vietnam if you don’t! He scared me so bad, I thought I was going to (mess) myself.”

Not included in the film was the story of another horrible casualty of war just two months later on May 18, 1967, when the tables were turned and A Company was in a race to aid B Company, which included young Spencer G.I.’s Jim Burch, Jim Workman and Denny Sheese. This action was known as the “Nine Days in May” and is considered one of the 10 worst battles in Vietnam.

While Burch and Workman were both killed in action on that day, Sheese made it home and still resides in Spencer.

“We were walking along the edge of a trail, Sergeant McNerney told me to get down and three or four soldiers of the enemy came into sight, so he stood up and emptied his magazine,” Jay ‘Joby’ McAuly said. “When he turned around to me, I saw the look in that man’s eyes, it was either kill or be killed. It struck me that I would follow this man and listen to every word he said, and I would follow him straight to the gates of hell if I had to.”

McNerney was set to remain stateside following the training and deployment of A Company, however, he made the decision to bring them back home.

“He pulled us together like a big family and I think he took ownership of us, too,” an A Company veteran said.

“I had a stake in those people, after all of those months, maybe they belonged to me,” McNerney admitted. “Maybe it was a greedy situation, but I didn’t want to see them wasted. I didn’t want to see them abused or anything bad happen to them, and I still thought they needed me, because I could offer them more than the other guy.”

Directed by Eric Dow and produced by Dow and John Ponsoll, the son of A Company veteran Sam Ponsoll, the film earned Audience Award Best Documentary at the Dances With Films Festival, Audience Award Best Documentary at the Louisville International Film Festival and was also shown at the GI Film Festival in Washington, D.C.

“When I got people who were willing to do their duty and fight for their country, I had a valuable commodity, so I treated them that way,” McNerney said at the beginning of the film.

A Company veteran, Leonard McElroy followed, “He was the right man for that job, he was hard and tough. A lot of guys would have called it mean,” he said. “But for me, I just called it getting ready to go to war.”

The voice of innocence set the mood for the crowd as OVHS senior Elizabeth Coffin sang the Star Spangled Banner and colors were presented by local veterans Mike Harvey, Joe Goldman, Ron Morley, Ted Mangin, Stanley Sims and Bill Wood of the Owen County Honor Guard.

A Company veterans Sam Ponsoll and Landis Bargatze were on hand to provide some insight for viewers prior to the feature presentation.

“My son produced and wrote this documentary. When he was growing up he was interested in the slides and pictured I had taken while I was in Vietnam. In November of ‘65, I was drafted into the Army and most of us spent two years together. First Sergeant David McNerney, who won the Medal of Honor with us on March 22, trained us from basic training until we got out of the boat in Vietnam,” Ponsoll said. “So the company spent two years together, it was a closeknit bunch of guys. My son would always look at pictures, went to a few reunions we had, and always remarked that he wanted to write a book about A Company. He said anytime I talked to somebody from A Company, I would light up, that bond and fellowship was always there. About three years ago, they decided to make this documentary, so they came to Houston, Texas and videotaped about 65 hours of interviews, all separately. Nobody saw the interviews except the person filming. They took all of these, bought some stock footage and produced this documentary, ‘Honor In The Valley of Tears.’ The Honor is for Sergeant David McNerney, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor, and the Valley of Tears was an area in Vietnam, which had heavy casualties throughout the war.”

“In 2007, 31 March, A and B Company had a reunion at Mc- Cormick’s Creek State Park, so there is a quite a bit of feeling for Spencer, Indiana,” Bargatze added. “We enjoy being here and we feel it an honor and a privilege to be back with this patriotic group of people again here today.”